Correspondence 1934, February

February 11, 1934

Krishnaprem’s letters as usual are interesting and admirable in substance and expression — and, in addition, there is an immense increase in comprehensiveness and wideness. His point about the intellect’s misrepresentation of the “Formless” (the result of a merely negative expression of something that is inexpressibly intimate and positive) is very well made and hits the truth in the centre. No one who has had the Ananda of the Brahman can do anything but smile at the charge of coldness; there is an absoluteness of immutable ecstasy in it, a concentrated intensity of silent and inalienable rapture that it is impossible even to suggest to anyone who has not had the experience. The eternal Reality is neither cold nor dry nor empty — you might just as well talk of the midsummer sunlight as cold or the ocean as dry or perfect fullness as empty. Even when you enter into it by elimination of form and everything else, it surges up as a miraculous fullness that is truly the Рūrṇат — when it is entered affirmatively as well as by negation, there can obviously be no question of emptiness or dryness! All is there and more than one could ever dream of as the All. That is why one has to object to the intellect thrusting itself in as the sab-jāntā [all-knowing] judge; if it kept to its own limits, there would be no objection to it. But it makes constructions of words and ideas which have no application to the Truth, babbles foolish things in its ignorance and makes its constructions a wall which refuses to let in the Truth that surpasses its own capacities and scope.

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(This is but a part of Krishnaprem’s letter to Dilip, dated February 1^st, 1934. We hope this is enough to give the reader an insight into Sri Aurobindo’s remarks.)

You raise some interesting points in regard to “expression” and “silence,” but at the same time, you seem to have slightly misunderstood me. I was urging that poetic expression can sometimes deal with realms in which philosophy cannot breathe. To me, at least, it is a necessity which I can scarcely avoid. But I did want to emphasise that our philosophic dialectic, logic etcetera are far too coarse to deal with the higher levels of Reality. It is easy to cut things with the snip-snap of one’s philosophical arguments, but too often we are merely cutting the air. Even the scientists are now finding that reality eludes them. And what is the significance of the square root of minus one which plays so essential a part in modern physics? To my mind it suggests most emphatically that there is a fundamental supra-national element that enters in at the conversion or zero point between appearance and reality or, to be more exact, between appearance on this level and one level “higher up”. I make this last qualification because I do not believe that the absolute Reality lies, as it were, next door to the world — except in a certain very ultimate sense, but there are many grades of “reality” (or appearance) in between. To the intellect the square root of minus one has no meaning (at least none to my intellect) but certainly it must have a meaning or it would not be as useful as it is to modem physics.

You speak of the “silence” of the Buddha which you contrast with “expression”. But if Buddha had not “expressed”, then we should not have five hundred million (or whatever it is) Buddhists living today. In truth he expressed a great deal and it was only on certain ultimate problems that he remained silent because they cannot be expressed in words — not at least in logical words. Symbolism is another matter. You say: “Suppose Buddha were a formless being under a formless tree in a formless Gaya; would we feel the same thrill at his silence?”

Well, in reality, that is just what He is in one aspect. This is the meaning of the doctrine of the Dharmakāya and of the “docetism” that marked so many Mahāyāna and also Christian Gnostic schools. But for most this Formless remains a mere matter of words and is, consequently, a falsity. Without experience, the “formless” is an empty abstraction, cold like all such, and shot through with the falsity and unreality that pervades all our purely intellectual concepts. We must use them but they only gain significance when life flows into them. In reality, they are neither cold nor abstract. It is our process of acquiring and using them that makes them so. We abstract by a process of negation and then wonder that the result is cold and negative. Our whole process stays on the purely intellectual level. When we say that Krishna is nirākāra we have only said what He is not. But our positive statements are equally delusive. When we say that He is ānandamaya we equally miss the reality because most men do not know what ananda is. They only know pleasure. They try to understand ananda in terms of pleasure and hence you get the materialising of the spiritual that marks so much of ordinary Vaishnava thought just as from the misuse of negation you get the coldness of so much Vedantic thought. The root of the trouble is just the mistaking of intellectual concepts for reality. When a man has seen something even of the Reality — call him Krishna or Buddha or Brahman — he then knows what is meant. He knows how He is nirākāra but not cold and how He is anandamaya but not mere pleasure. Till we get experience and knowledge we shall always be in unreality however lofty our conceptions may be. The Vedantin despises the Vaishnava for the latter’s concreteness and the Vaishnava spits at the Vedantin saying it is all cold. One says “I don’t want” and the other says “I want.” Damn all their “wants” and “don’t wants”; they are quite irrelevant. These “wants” and “don’t wants” do all the damage. It is not what we want that matters but what He wills, which is quite a different thing. All these concepts are so many suits of clothes. Unless we reach up to the Reality and fill them, they only serve for endless debate. What did the Rishi mean by saying He is nirākāra? What did the Buddha mean by anātman? What did the Vaishnavas mean by saying He is nikhilarasāmṛta mūrti?[1] The answer to this question must be sought in experience, not in mere dialectic. When the light of experience streams in and fills the empty concepts, then and then only does recognition flow in like a sea and we can know why the above words are used. āścaryavat paśyati kaścidenam [as wonderful, few see Him. Gita 2.29]. Then we can know why the ātma of the Upanishad means the same thing as the anātma of the Buddha and in a flash be free from the empty scholastic disputes that have filled the millennia. “Oh, but these are contradictions” — peevishly explains the intellect to which the only answer is: “Very likely they are, but you have dam’ well got to put up with them!”

I don’t mean at all to urge the contempt for the intellect which most Christians and some Vaishnavas have taught, but I do mean to say that the intellect is in itself a sort of formative or shaping machine. It can only work if it is supplied with material to shape and that material must come either from the sense-world below or from the spiritual world above.

In the meanwhile it seems to me as foolish to lose one’s emotion in the coldness of abstract negation as to fuddle one’s mind in the warmth of a (fundamentally) sensuous Goloka.[2]

These thoughts were suggested to me by the contrast you drew between the emotional singing of Chaitanya Deva and the silent meditation of the Buddha. Needless to say that the remarks in the paragraphs immediately above do not apply to these great Teachers but only to some of their followers.

You speak of a certain “shakiness at the idea of being immersed in a Timeless mute Akṣara Brahman”;[3] but surely that is only because of our ignorance of what is meant by that experience and of a consequent misconception in terms of worldly experiences. That is where so many Vaishnavas as well as Vedantins go wrong. They quarrel furiously about words, about the expression, instead of bending their whole energy on an attempt to realise what is meant by the expression. In the words of an old Buddhist writer, “that is called confusing the moon with the finger that points to it.”

(…)

In the last resort, this whole cosmos is but expression — Divine Expression, and in proportion as He, the kaviḥ purāṇaḥ,[4] is able to manifest in us, we shall ourselves automatically become centres of expression. Till then, our productions whether in the realm of poetry, philosophy or art, are but the play of children, funerals where none is dead and marriage where there is no bride. (…)

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February 13, 1934

I saw a strange dream last night. First I dreamed a nice dream about you and Mother, which I remembered on waking up at 2 a.m. but can’t remember now. But the second was very fine and made a great impression on me. It was due I suppose to Mother’s telling me about Krishna’s hands offering her the “sun-flower” for me which of course overjoyed me (that even Krishna took some notice of the poor fellow). I saw I was praying fervently with tears in my eyes for Krishna; asking him to show himself for once and not remain unconvincingly invisible (through grace or not) when my eyes were concentrated on the sky (I think) and first a spot of light appeared, next lo! the silhouette of a fine figure on a horse flashing past the sky. I remember its dark silhouette made a great impression on me — particularly as it looked so fine on the horse. I take it to be some shadow of Krishna maybe — or perhaps it is too much to expect even Krishna’s silhouette even in dream? Anyway the impression it gave me in the dream was that it was Krishna’s head that appeared in response to my prayer — for it appeared just when I was on the verge of despondency that the Divine never heard our prayers and we deluded ourselves (wish-fulfilment?) that He did.

It was obviously an answer to the prayer — such dream-experiences always are and the impression of the inner being in the dream is not usually mistaken.

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February 17, 1934

I had no intention of sarcasm or banter, but simply meant to say that such deprivations can be used as opportunities for evolving the necessary capacity of the inner being.

I have not wantonly stopped the books[5] or free letter-writing nor have I become impatient with you or anyone. I am faced with a wanton and brutal attack on my life-work from outside[6] and I need all my time and energy to meet it and do what is necessary to repel it during these days. I hope that I can count not only on the indulgence but on the support of those who have followed me and loved me, while I am thus occupied, much against my will.

I do hope you will not misunderstand me, I have not altered to you in the least and if I wrote laconically it was because I had no time to do otherwise.

My prohibition of long letters was of a general character and I had to issue it so that the stoppage of the books might not result in a flood of long letters which would leave me no time for making the concentration and taking the steps I have to take. I have said that you can send your poems and write too when you feel very urgent need — I had no feeling to the contrary at all.

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[1] nikhilarasāmṛta mūrti: literally, a form made up of the nectarous essence of universal delight.

[2] Goloka: the Vaishnava heaven of eternal Beauty and Bliss.

[3] Aksara Brahman: imperishable, unchanging Brahman.

[4] kaviḥ purāṇaḥ. the ancient poet.

[5] The heads of the Ashram’s various departments used to report their day’s work in notebooks to Mother and Sri Aurobindo. At the same time they also presented their work problems or problems of sadhana. Nirod, for example, used to send three notebooks: personal, literary and, as he was the resident doctor, medical.

[6] We don’t really know what happened. But, in fact, Sri Aurobindo often refers to Hitler and Mussolini in subsequent letters. For it was the period when the Dark was rising. Personified in Hitler, and in Mussolini to some extent, the nazi and fascist forces were gathering strength, soon to burst brutally over the world, unleashing the unspeakable Horror of the Dark.